“Light from the Lake” is a blog about the inspirational people of Our Lady of the Lake University. It is about students who serve their community, alumni who shape the city, faculty and staff who influence the next generation of leaders, and the Congregation of Divine Providence that founded and sponsors OLLU today. It is about a University community that turned a four-alarm fire in 2008 into a catalyst for growth and renewal. The blog is written by Ken Rodriguez, an award-winning journalist and marketer at OLLU and freelance writer.

Note: This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

It reads: “An elderly woman died last month. Having never married, she requested no male pallbearers. In her handwritten instructions for her memorial service, she wrote, ‘They wouldn’t take me out while I was alive, I don’t want them to take me out when I’m dead.’”

I don’t recall laughing that hard during Sister Act. I kept on reading: “At Sunday School, they were teaching how God created everything, including human beings. Little Johnny seemed especially intent when they told him Eve was created out of one of Adam’s ribs. Later in the week, his mother noticed him lying down as though he were ill, and she said, ‘Johnny, what is the matter?’ Little Johnny responded, ‘I have pain in my side. I think I’m going to have a wife.’”

Sister Isabel is an 82-year-old jewel, a member of the Congregation of Divine Providence and a retired chemistry professor. She possesses a sharp wit and a gentle smile and has served at OLLU for more than a half century with distinction and humor. About once a week, she elicits campus-wide laughs with emails to faculty, students and staff. I share the best ones with my wife and friends.

Consider this gem: “Three boys are in the schoolyard bragging about their fathers. The first boy says, ‘My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, they give him $50.’ The second boy says, ‘That’s nothing. My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song, they give him $100.’ The third boy says, ‘I got you both beat. My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a sermon and it takes eight people to collect all the money!’”

Sister Isabel adds levity to my toughest days. Before we ever met, she had me doubled over at my desk (no easy feat), and I suppose that was her way of marking my arrival at OLLU on April Fool’s. As I approach my three year anniversary at The Lake, Sister Isabel approaches her own milestone – 58 years.

She started in September 1954. Sister Isabel is kind, humble and knows how to tell a good story. When Today’s Catholic interviewed her in 2004, she recalled creating a stir while studying for her doctorate at the University of Texas in the 1960s. “I appeared one day in the lab in secular clothes and with the little habit and hat gone,” she told Today’s Catholic, “and they said, ‘Whoa! You have legs!”

Sister Isabel is a remarkable woman. She taught chemistry for more than 50 years, served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for 23 years, and secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in research stipends and scholarship funds for the University. An English professor once described her to the San Antonio Express-News as “a grant-getting marvel.”

When the San Antonio Women’s Hall of Fame was founded, Sister Isabel entered as an inaugural member in 1984. She is retiring in May as director of Mission Effectiveness and will work at Our Lady of the Lake convent.

She doesn’t do standup. She doesn’t create jokes. She just passes good material along. I recently shared one of her emails on my Facebook page: “A geography student wrote, ‘In Scandinavia, the Danish people come from Denmark, the Norwegians come from Norway and the Lapdancers come from Lapland.’”

The posting generated more than a dozen likes and comments. My favorite came from a retired educator who wrote: “Worst answer I got when teaching was that ‘the bluebonnet plague wiped out half of Europe.’”

I shared the post with Sister Isabel, and her response made my day. I not only put a smile on her face. I got her to laugh.